Plotting Points On A Line

Watching Cat Power the other night at Hiro was kind of a revelation– we can't think of a time when we ever saw a performer so completely detached from the material at hand. She didn't really bother to end many of the songs, and she could barely bother to start many of the songs. We mean that not as a value judgement but as a statement of fact. The result was that rather than the show being about songs as statements, or the entire set as some kind of larger statement, it was just a series of strung together moments. Rare, free-standing moments in which her voice– THAT voice– hit those totally stunning, raspy, even soulful marks that only she is capable of hitting. Yes, we're saying that her voice is so good that she can achieve soul even when she's not giving any of herself to the song. By the time she was on the third verse of any given cover tune, she knew, and we knew, that there wouldn't be any more of those moments in that song, so it was silly banter, silly banter, silly banter until guitarist Matt Sweeney got her into the next jam. At which point she had our attention back because Kablaamo! another of those fleeting but sublime mini-moments was potentially right around the corner. It was a pretty fuckin' unique experience, or at least unique to Cat Power shows, as we imagine that that's what all of her sets have been like as of late. If you didn't mind not giving that much of yourself back to her during the performance, then damned if it wasn't a pretty rad and kind of out there concert going experience.